(In reply to comment #41)
You were probably testing a 2.0 beta with the new Places component in spring 2006 (finally it was decided that Places was not yet ready for the Firefox 2 release). This new bookmarks & history component offers much more possibilities but the price can be performance problems on slower systems (slow startups and shutdowns). Although performance has much improved over time, see Bug 380307.
(In reply to comment #41)
You were probably testing a 2.0 beta with the new Places component in spring 2006 (finally it was decided that Places was not yet ready for the Firefox 2 release). This new bookmarks & history component offers much more possibilities but the price can be performance problems on slower systems (slow startups and shutdowns). Although performance has much improved over time, see Bug 380307.